What if you could make anything in virtual reality? Not just within a creation-oriented game like Fantastic Contraption, but actually be given the tools themselves to develop an original game within VR? Unity Technologies, the game development software company, have just the solution for that.
At the Unite 2016 conference in Los Angeles, California, Unity finally announced a launch window for their long-teased in-VR development software. In December, Unity will be releasing EditorVR, but with a twist. EditorVR will be completely open-source with an open application program interface (API) as well, so that users can customize their tools to their heart’s content. EditorVR wants to foster creativity for VR development, it being new and all. Its interface was made with current Unity developers in mind, so fittingly, there’s nothing new to learn. And what better way to construct things than being within the space itself, and testing it out organically.
EditorVR wants to foster creativity for VR development
For the demo at Unite 2016, Unity’s Principal Designer Timoni West and Principal Engineer of Unity Labs Amir Ebrahimi demoed the software from a familiar virtual place: Henry’s lookout tower from this year’s critically acclaimed videogame Firewatch. The tower was recently recreated by Campo Santo’s own Jane Ng for the VR application Destinations from Valve. From this space, Unity displayed the ease of EditorVR, from pulling up menus to making on-the-fly iterations. “All we wanted to do is create the scene, play through the scene, be able to iterate quickly, and so [user interface] we’ve been really refining a lot,” Unity CMO Clive Downie told Gamasutra in an interview. “So that the user experience doesn’t get in the way of [going from] idea down to scene.”
You can read more about Unity’s Unite 2016 conference here, and stay tuned to them for more info on EditorVR’s future release.
